“Well played, Flash!” he commended. “Well played.”
Barry’s mask was off, but he was vibrating his face so fast that his features were blurred to the point of indistinctness. All anyone could see was a smear of black atop a smudged, peach-colored blob.
After all, Pocus had ordered him to stand still and remove his mask. He hadn’t said anything about not vibrating his face.
“Mask off, Hocus Pocus,” Barry said in the vibrating bass he used as the Flash. “What’s next? The rest of the costume? Shouldn’t we try to keep this PG?”
Pocus chuckled and shook his head. “Truthfully, I don’t care if people know what you look like under that ridiculous mask. It’s quite pointless. Go ahead—put it back on.”
Barry did so, quickly and gratefully.
Pocus sighed and looked around, his gaze traveling up and around the stadium. There were pockets of empty seats and streams of people at the exits. The evacuation was proceeding well.
“The moment has passed,” the magician said, his voice laden with overdramatic regret. “Timing is everything, you know, and this is just the opening act. We wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise . . .” He gestured theatrically, and sparkles filled the air between them. “Tonight, I will summon you. We will meet. And I shall visit upon you your final humiliation and ultimate destruction in combat before a worshipful public.” He leaned in close. “And then, Flash, this city and everyone in it will bow to me as its true hero!”
“Doubt it,” Barry said with a bravado he did not feel.
Pocus chortled, twirled his wand, and conjured a choking cloud of fire and smoke. He hovered above the smoke, then shot off into the sky, vanishing over the horizon.
Barry felt movement return to his limbs. Before he could run off, the camera operator stopped him.
“Hey, Flash?” she said, her voice still shaking from the ordeal. “I don’t believe all the stuff they’re saying about you. About how you’re a villain now.”
He smiled at her. “Thanks. That means a lot. It’s sort of a complicated situation.”
She hefted her camera. “Want to tell a few million people about it?”
“Barry!” Caitlin yelled in his earpiece. “Get back to STAR Labs! We’ve got something!”
“Maybe another time,” Barry told the camerawoman. “I’ve got to run.”
And so he ran.
In the Cortex, Cisco sat exhausted at his desk. Caitlin was pacing madly, and H.R. sat backward on a chair, leaning forward urgently. Barry took one look at Cisco’s lidded eyes and downcast expression and said, “Oh man, it’s bad news, isn’t it?”
“It’s actually great news,” Cisco said with a yawn. “I’m just out of gas, amigo.”
“He’s barely slept since this all started,” Caitlin said.
“At this point, the caffeine is just keeping my eyes open. Barely.” Cisco struggled to spin his chair around so that he could type at his keyboard. “I ate half a bag of those ridiculous peanut butter coffee beans of H.R.’s and barely got a buzz.”
“Hey!” H.R. complained. “Those were mine.”
Cisco made a half-hearted effort to wave him off, then gave up and yawned again. “So here’s what I’ve figured out . . .” An image came up on the screen, and Cisco yawned a third time. “Caitlin, take over. I’m taking a nap.” He put his head down on his folded arms on the desk.
Caitlin shrugged apologetically. “He’s really tired.”
“I get it.” Barry patted Cisco on the shoulder. “Walk me through what he figured out.”
She pointed to the screen, which showed, once again, the image of the nanites from Barry’s thalamus. “The nanites are in there because Pocus put them in there. We theorize—”
“I theorize,” Cisco grunted groggily.
“Cisco theorizes,” Caitlin said with an eye roll, “that his wand stores or manufactures the nanites somehow. That part is still way beyond us, at least until we get our hands on the wand. Anyway, he uses the wand to project the nanites in whichever direction and at whichever target.”
“In this case, me,” Barry said.
“Right. We can’t just open up your head and scoop out a sample of the nanites, but we were able to isolate a couple from one of the trees in the park. And even though they’re too sealed up and secure for us to get into them and see how they work, we were able to observe them, both from your scans and from the ones we found. And what we realized—”
“What I realized,” Cisco said, pushing himself to his feet. “If you’re not going to tell the story right, I’ll just have to rally and do it myself.” He yawned once more, as though for effect. “These things are incredibly sophisticated,” he went on, gesturing to the nanites on the screen, “but in one way they’re very simple. They have two states: on and off.”
“A binary system,” Barry said. It was the basis of most computer science—down at the bit level, a computer’s function was either on (represented by the number 1) or off (represented by the number 0). It seemed too crude and simple to make something as complicated as a computer work, but if you had thousands of “switches” and set each one to 1 or 0 depending on what you needed, anything was possible. To a human being, a string like 01010101001111010111 010101010101000000011111110101010101010101010 11111 looked like gibberish, but to a computer, it was an instruction. An order. A command.
Like the commands Hocus Pocus was sending to Barry.
Barry scratched his head, partly working through Cisco’s theory, but mostly because the thought of nanites in his brain still made his head feel itchy. “So the nanites are either on or off. Got it. And they keep replicating before they can die. So how do we turn them off for good?”
“That’s the tough part,” Cisco admitted. “Except for the part where it’s not the tough part, because, even sleep-deprived, I’m still an absolute genius.” He paused, as if waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, he pointed to H.R. “That’s your cue, for God’s sake!”
H.R. wheeled over a cart with a black cloth draped over it. “We will discuss my remuneration for the purloined coffee beans at a later date,” he said in a very calm, measured voice.
Cisco blew it off. “Whatever. Look, Barry, I can’t do anything about the nanites in your brain. They’re way too sophisticated, which, by the way, I will deny having said if you ever repeat it.”
“I sense a but coming up,” Barry told him.
“Like JLo, my friend,” Cisco teased. “Ta-da!” He whipped the black cloth off the cart, revealing something that looked like a skullcap made out of shimmering metallic spaghetti.
“It’s an inverse transmitting neuralgic transformer!” Cisco crowed.
There was silence for a moment.
“Uh, what do you call it?” H.R. ventured.
Another moment of silence as Cisco fidgeted.
“Well,” he said at last, “I call it an, uh, inverse transmitting neuralgic transformer.” He stared at his toes, abashed. “Sorry. I let you guys down. Man, I am so tired.”
“What does it do?” Barry asked.
Cisco perked up. “I’m glad you asked, young man!”
“I’m older than you.”
Cisco plowed on. “This lovely bit of kit can take in the ambient controlling radiation and convert its signal, flipping the requisite bits and bytes in the nanites’ source code.”
“It turns them off!” Barry reached for it.
Cisco slapped his hand away. “Not so fast, fleet-feet! It doesn’t hack the nanites all by itself. But what it does do is convert a signal that Hocus Pocus sends them. In other words . . .”
“In other words,” Barry said slowly, “if we get him to try his wand trick on me again, this time it’ll wipe out the nanites.”
“Exactamundo.”
Caitlin raised her hand. “Sounds great, guys, but . . . why would Pocus zap Barry again? He’s got him under control already. There’s no need for him to establish control again.”
Cisco opened his mouth to spea
k, then closed it.
He opened it again. Paused. Thought. Shook his head. “Nope. Still got nothing to say.”
Barry grinned. “You don’t need to. I’ve got it figured out.” He picked up the gadget Cisco hadn’t bothered nicknaming. “We’re gonna need Wally.”
22
“There’s a chance this won’t work,” Barry told them all. “Tell us something we don’t know,” Wally snarked gently.
They had all gathered at the Cortex: Barry, Wally, Iris, Joe, H.R., Caitlin, and Cisco. The plan Barry had concocted was fiendishly simple. He hoped that its simplicity meant there were fewer opportunities for it to fail, but life as a scientist and as the Flash had taught him that there was always something that could go wrong.
“If it does fail,” Iris said, “then what?”
Barry drew in a deep breath. “I guess it depends on exactly how it fails. Best-case scenario, I’ll still be under Pocus’s control.”
“I hate that that’s the best-case scenario,” Caitlin said.
“Think how I feel,” Barry told her. “Worst-case scenario is . . .” He hesitated. “Worst-case scenario, Pocus keeps his control on me and gets Kid Flash in the bargain.”
“Two speedsters at his beck and call,” Joe said, and shivered. “He’d be unstoppable.”
“That’s why I’m counting on my two favorite groups to stop the unstoppable,” Barry said. He pointed to Cisco and Joe. “You both need to be ready. If Pocus maintains control of me or—God forbid—gets Wally, too, I need the combined might of STAR Labs and CCPD to come down on us. Hard.”
“You mean on him, don’t you?” Caitlin ventured.
“Eventually, yeah. But first order of business is to take away his living weapon . . . or weapons.” Barry glanced over at Wally, who nodded without hesitation.
“Kneecap us,” Wally said. “Whatever it takes. You can’t let him use us against innocent people. Robbing jewelry stores is one thing, but what he told Barry to do at the ballpark . . .” Wally shivered. “Don’t let him do that. You can’t put us above thousands of innocents.”
Iris folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t like this talk. What if the only way to stop you guys is permanently? You can’t expect us to do that.”
Barry nodded slowly, then looked at each of them in turn, finishing with Iris. “At my top speed,” he said, “I could kill a hundred people a second. So fast I’d be on to the next hundred before the first hundred bodies hit the ground.” He jerked his head in Wally’s direction. “Double that. So, yeah, Iris—if you have to kill us, that’s what you have to do. Otherwise, we could wipe out the city in minutes, if that’s what he orders us to do.”
Iris turned around and looked as though she would walk out. Joe put an arm around her.
“We’ll find another way,” he said solemnly. “We won’t let you hurt anyone. Trust me.”
“I do.” Barry realized tears had gathered in his eyes. He was facing the very real prospect that the people who loved and cared for him the most might—in just a short time— have to make the choice to end his life for the greater good. “I’m trusting all of you with my life, Wally’s life, and the lives of everyone in Central City.”
“We won’t let you down,” Caitlin said.
Iris turned back to him. There were tears in her eyes, too. “We won’t let you down,” she whispered.
The others murmured their agreement. What had begun as a rally now had the atmosphere of a vigil. No one wanted to think about what could go wrong.
Cisco went off to make final adjustments to his gadget. The others split off and milled about. Barry turned to Wally and slapped him on the shoulder. “You ready for this?”
Wally bobbed his head. “Yep. Definitely.”
“This whole plan relies on you,” he reminded him.
“Don’t worry. I’m fast enough.”
Barry thought of Madame Xanadu. “It’s not about speed this time. It’s about patience and timing. You have to stand still. That’s what I need you for.”
Wally nodded. “I got it. I’m your man.”
“I know you are. We have to be ready to move at any second. Pocus said tonight, but not exactly when. He could summon me at any time.”
Iris approached them both. “Wally, can I have a moment with Barry?”
“Sure, sis.” Wally wandered over to where Joe and Caitlin were chatting.
Barry gazed down into Iris’s eyes. They were warm and welcoming and moist with tears. “Don’t cry,” he said, wiping a tear away with his thumb.
“If you get to cry, I get to cry,” she told him.
He chuckled and wiped his own eyes. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair.”
“Are you sure about this plan?”
“I’m sure it’s the only plan we’ve got.”
“That’s not the same thing, but you’re right, so I’ll give you a pass on that. Just promise me you’ll be careful, OK?”
He folded his arms around her and murmured against her forehead, “I will. I promise.”
“And don’t let anything happen to Wally.”
He said nothing. After all, the whole plan relied on something at least seeming to happen to Wally.
“There’s one possibility you maybe haven’t considered,” Iris said. “Another plan.”
“I’m all ears.” He leaned in as if telling her a secret. “’Cause, honestly? The plan we’ve got kinda sucks. If you have a better one . . .”
“You’re trying to make me laugh so I won’t worry, but it’s not going to work. Seriously, have you considered just . . . running away?”
“Iris . . .”
She put a hand over his mouth. “No, hear me out. For all you know, his control over you weakens with distance. You’ve never been more than a few city blocks away from him. Run to Tibet or Japan or Australia. Just to see. Can’t you do that?”
Such was the pleading in her voice and the desperation in her eyes that Barry almost did exactly that. It would have taken him a minute, maybe, to run to Japan. And that long only because running across the unpredictable and tempestuous ocean was slower-going than solid land.
“I can’t do that,” he told her gently. “If I thought it might work, I’d try. Maybe. But nothing indicates that distance affects the nanites. And besides: I can’t just keep running away from him. I have to confront him and beat him if I ever want to help the people of this city again. Or get my job back.” He tilted her chin up and kissed her softly. “Or have any kind of life again.”
“I hate it when you’re right,” she said, hugging him.
“Yeah. Me, too.”
The sun was just starting to go down. Cisco had finished his preparations. Barry and Wally sat across from each other at a table, waiting. For two speedsters, sitting and doing nothing was the worst torture imaginable.
They managed to endure.
Outside, the sky bled red and purple and orange. Inside, the Cortex hummed and glowed with artificial light. Joe had returned to CCPD, and Iris had gone to the Picture News office. H.R.’s air drumming had become so annoying that Caitlin stole his drumsticks and was sitting on them. H.R. sulked in a corner.
Cisco had found stronger coffee and a second wind. He was pacing like mad.
“Tom Petty was right,” he blurted out into the silence. “The waiting is the hardest—”
“Guys!” Barry yelped. “Guys, it’s happ—”
He was gone.
An instant later, so was Wally.
Cisco and Caitlin flew into action immediately. With the trackers built into both Flashes’ suits, Cisco and Caitlin could tell where the speedsters were going and follow them on the screens in the Cortex.
“Barry’s headed to the pier!” Cisco yelled into his microphone.
“You don’t have to shout,” Wally’s voice came back. “You’re, like, literally in my ear.”
“Sorry!” Cisco screamed. “It’s the caffeine! It’s kicking in!”
“He’s almost there,” Caitlin told Wally, pushi
ng Cisco aside. “You have to—”
“I know what I have to do,” Wally said grimly. “No offense, but stop distracting me. I’ve got this.”
Caitlin dropped into a chair next to Cisco. Together, they looked up at the big screen, where the Flash and Kid Flash icons were converging on the Central City Pier.
“Now what?” Caitlin whispered.
Cisco said nothing.
“Now nothing.” H.R. had crept up behind them. “Now we just . . . wait.”
23
Hocus Pocus stood on a parapet at the end of the Central City Pier, the terminus at which the pier dead-ended against the waters of the river. Behind him, the sun sank into the water, a speck of glowing red, like a baleful eye on the horizon, glaring and seeing all. With the night coming on, the effect was dramatic and potent.
Mood was everything, he knew. Atmosphere mattered. He was a master showman—the master showman, in fact—and his final triumph had to look suitably sensational. It wasn’t enough to defeat the Flash in full view of the city; he had to look good doing it, too.
The pier was shut down for the season, but Hocus Pocus would not let something as simple as disconnected power cords and mothballed gadgetry stand in his way. This was an event! This was history in the making! It should be a festival, an occasion, and so it would be.
With the nanotechnology at his disposal, it was a simple matter to bring power and light and motion to the pier. The carousel spun, its wooden steeds rising and falling in rhythm to the calliope music. The boardwalk sang with the sound of games from the arcades, the shouts of joy from the old Tilt-A-Whirl, the rambunctious clatter of bumper cars.
And everything was free! Free! The only cost would be watching the end of the Flash and the ascension of Hocus Pocus to the exalted name of Abra Kadabra.
Thousands had gathered, a crowd massing up and down the pier, lining up along its edges, spilling into the alleyways. They wore glow-in-the-dark light sticks around their necks and glowing bracelets on their wrists. It was a party!
There were TV crews with their cameras aimed at him, and, more important, everyone else in the crowd was pointing a cell phone in his direction. His ultimate defeat of the Flash would be live-streamed to the world.